College Democrats Invade Ohio
Posted by on November 6, 2006 at 11:06 AM
This weekend the Ohio Democratic Party teamed up with College Democrats of America to bring students from all over the country to Ohio for a weekend of GOTV activities. The "CDA Ohio Invasion" was a big hit - with College Dems pouring into the ODP offices and mobilizing for a weekend of voter contact.
The Ohio College Dems put a lot of work into organizing the weekend. Their intent was twofold, in addition to adding a boost to GOTV efforts for the weekend, Lauren Wolfe, the President of CDA, who made her way down from Michigan for the weekend, explained to me that their intent was to give CDA members from states that may not have super-competitive races in their neck of the woods experience working in a swing state during a close election.
While this was largely about Election Day 2006, the added benefit was giving College Dems who weren't around during the '04 cycle a taste of high-intensity campaigning in anticipation of ramping up their efforts for 2008.
In between canvass shifts, College Dems lit up the phone to
remind people to vote for the Democratic ticket on Tuesday!
Matt Browner Hamlin, of Baltimore Group Blog was in town for the weekend covering the swingiest of swing states and blogged the invasion too:
The center of the GOTV storm here in the Columbus ODP office today was an infusion of youth in the form of over 100 College Democrats from around the country.“The Turn Around Ohio Invasion” brought College Democrats from ten states to Columbus to canvass and phone bank for the full ticket of Democratic candidates. They spent six hours Saturday hitting precincts throughout Franklin County, which is split between the 15th (Mary Jo Kilroy) and 12th (Bob Shamansky) congressional districts. As the walk teams made it back to the Democratic Party headquarters, they picked up call sheets and started making phone calls for Sherrod Brown and the Democratic ticket.
The hard effort for victory prize has to go out to twenty-four students from Mississippi who traveled almost fifteen hours by bus just for for the canvass on Saturday and will head back home Sunday morning (Some of the Mississippi University for Women Democrats have set up a blog for their chapter - go give them some love.). “One of the goals of the “Turn Around Ohio Invasion” was to get students involved in a highly competitive election who wouldn’t have that opportunity in their home states,” said Lauren Wolfe, College Democrats of America National President. “Students in Mississippi came here to see how these races are run. We would have even more students here today, but there are so many competitive races around the country.”
Wolfe says the College Democrats have their own version of the Fifty State Plan - they are the youth outreach arm of the DNC after all. There are currently College Democrats chapters on about 1,500 campuses nationwide; Wolfe aims to have a chapter on every single college campus in America by the 2008 election. The students who are in Ohio today will return to their campuses better prepared to organize for a more Democratic America over the next few years.
More photos over at Democratic Flickr...
